by John Köehler
Table of Contents
Achieving Your Dreams – pushing yourself to get it done right
We Get it – we are writers and artists and we get you and your purpose
The Art & Science – the importance of mixing inspiration with masterful craft
Print on Demand – the new way to put books on the shelf
Selling Your Book – a great book needs a loud-mouthed author
Print vs. Digital – offering your book up in multiple ways
Your Book Domain – using a book domain name as a lighthouse
Your Legacy Book – first-time authors paying for professional preparation
The Royal Treatment – everything you need to know about Author’s Royalties
The Experience – transforming a writer into an author
Achieving Your Dream
There are many ways to publish your book these days. Certainly at the top of the heap would be a book deal with a New York publisher, where they give you a six-figure advance, pick you up in the limo and have a ticker tape parade in your honor with huge inflatables of your book floating above you, along with adoring crowds holding up your book.
But then reality sets in and you get a series of rejection letters or nothing at all. What started out as an amazing process and a gift you wanted to share with the world has turned into a demeaning and demoralizing put down, and you feel dejected.
Fortunately you pick yourself up and say, “I don’t need permission to publish my book. I can do it myself.” So you set your course to do just that and start looking into exactly how to do it. You visit some of the self-publishing websites. They make it look easy. But you realize that you still need to get your book edited, and you don’t have a really great cover yet (the one your nephew did is nice, but not nice enough), and you need to get the book laid out.
You find that there are a lot of decisions to make and that self-publishing is a lot of work. You also find out that many of the online self-publishing companies will help you with your cover and your layout and your editing. For a fee. You decide you are willing to pay to have your book prepared for publishing, but you find out you can’t really talk to the editor, or the designer, or the layout artist. It is all very clinical, very automated. Very impersonal.
You wish there was a publisher who worked with the same standards as the large New York publishers, but would talk to you as a colleague and help you, and give you honest feedback about your work. You dream of a publisher who would not put you down but lift you. You wonder if there is a publisher who will collaborate with you and treat you like a professional versus a worthless baby writer. You just need a hand up and you wish there was someone, anyone, who would reach down and pull you up into the big leagues and help you get it right.
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We Get it
At Koehler Books, we get it. We get what you want and we get your dreams, because we are writers too. We are not just in the publishing business—we write. We get it. We get you. We know how it feels to dream big and get nothing. We understand your aspirations and desire to share your story with the world. We respect your dreams and we respect you, the dream maker.
We are not a self-publisher and we are not a New York publisher. We are a small Independent publisher who uses the same standards of excellence as the New York publishers. If they are the Major Leagues in publishing, we are the Minor Leagues. We do what they do on a smaller scale. They are slow while we can turn on a dime. They are impersonal whereas we are personable and treat you like… a person. They only want the best writers and we only want your best. You will never ever be able to talk directly to them, but you can call us, or meet us, or text us or email us. They will not respond, but we will and quickly.
Most of our editors have published books and stories. All of us have been through the wringer of having an editor beat up our stories to make them better. They say no pain, no gain, but they never told us it would hurt so much. We know that in the end it is worth it, but we will warn you up front and help you prepare for the emotional rollercoaster of letting your manuscript go to turn into something so much better than you alone could hope to craft.
We begin by acknowledging you as an artist, as a fellow writer. In that acknowledgement there is respect and the absolute belief that you are now a colleague. By welcoming you as a colleague we are inviting you into a world with higher standards than you have probably worked in. We invite you up into the Big Leagues and demand that you adhere to those standards, that you put on the uniform, that you speak and think and act like a pro, and that you sign on with us to push yourself to your limits in order to create a book that is beyond your wildest dream.
If you come to us and say, “I’m riding everything on this book and it must make money,” then we will show you the door. Because that is not the beginning of your purpose. Your purpose in writing and publishing your book is first to please yourself as an artist. Then it is to learn your craft and take it to a masterful level, and work with other masters who will help make your work better than it was.
Then your purpose is to share your work with your family and friends. And finally, to share it with the world. We will not lie to you or pretend that your book is a bestseller. It probably won’t be. Most books published sell fewer than 200 copies. You must be willing to live with that in spite of your hopes to swim around in a mountain of royalties.
Ultimately the success of your book will be determined by the quality of your work. Please allow me to say that again: the success of your book will be determined by the quality of your work. We prepare your book, build the site, design a great cover, give you spectacular editing, get it in the catalogs and hopefully in the stores, offer it in print and epub. We bust our butts to make it great, to make you great.
But in the end, dear writer, we do not decide the success of your book. The reader decides. If one person reads your book and tells another how great it is, that is success, and that is the beginning of a book that will sell well or, as you imagine in your best dreams, a runaway bestseller.
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The Art & Science
Writing a great book starts with art and ends with science. The art of your book is all about your inspiration. The idea for your book, and then the constant inflowing of inspired thoughts that continue to fill the pages and are passed on in each and every word you lay down. At least we hope it is that way!
We understand all about inspiration and the art of a good story. Our editors will help you craft something beyond even your inspiration, but it will still be yours. Your voice. Your story. But in order to read well, even the most inspired stories must be matched with good craftsmanship by masters of the science of writing, design and publishing.
It all starts with editing. After you have agreed to come on board with Koehler Books and have signed with us, you will begin working with one of our editors, selected specifically for you by our Executive Editor, Joe Coccaro. Joe may in fact edit your book, but either way you will meet your editor and discuss your story.
By that time they will already have read your manuscript and will come to the table, or the phone, with a plan and comments about your writing, about your style, your grammar, your characters and dialogue. They may ask you to rewrite some areas or polish some others. It depends on how clean your manuscript is.
The editor is the boss. Not Ghengis Khan, but the boss. They will work in a collaborative and collegial way with you, but you will be required to be convincing and fight for those passages you love. But if they say something like, “it does nothing for the story,” then you must let it go. The editor is the boss.
The editor uses three types of editing: the chainsaw, the chisel and the polishing rag. The chainsaw in the beginning, to cut out redundancies and sections considered too cumbersome, too much, or that interfere with the thrust of the story. The chisel then for the second stage of working to push and nudge and cut and get it right. And then when you think it is just right, even more polishing and cutting and moving and editing.
Another editing analogy uses stone: boulders, rocks, gravel and grit. The true grit of your manuscript will come about over time and with great effort. In the end we expect to have very fine material that we can lay down on the pages without bumps, easy to read, smooth as glass, all day long. Good editing.
The designer is also the boss. The cover of your book is a little like a label on a jar of sauces at the grocery store. It is the first thing people see. It will either attract them to pick it up, or it will not. It will either look like real sauce, or not. Same with your book. It must quickly convey the message of the story. It must be provocative and stimulate the mind. It must LOOK like a book cover.
We will work with you on the book cover. Our award-winning designers will craft a masterful cover, or sometimes more than one option, for your consideration. You will have a say in the cover, but not the final say. The publisher has the final say, but nine times out of ten, we are in agreement with the author and the choice is obvious.
The text as well is critical. Some people look at book text and say, “So what? It’s just a bunch of text.” Many decisions go into the science of a book interior or text design. It must look and read like a book, and there are certain rules and standards which need to be followed so that the reader will feel comfortable in reading the text. Decisions about the pagination, and the header pages and colophons and table of contents and photos and legal page and title page and acknowledgements and Forewords and and…. Well, there you go. Text design is an art and a science.
Finally there is the publishing and distribution. Many things can go wrong here, as you will find if you try and self-publish your book. After your book is edited and laid out and the cover is done and the book is ready for prime time, we send it to Ingram Books. Ingram is one of the biggest book distributors in the world. They get it and they get it right. We order a single book proof that is a finished book. You approve it and we’re off to the races and Amazon, Kindle, Nook and iBooks, and you can start planning your book party.
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Print on Demand
In the old days of publishing, when Borders wasn’t dead and gone, publishers would order a print run of a book they published. It might be 10,000 copies or 25,000 or more, depending on the quality of the work and the celebrity of the author. Their goal was to first pay back all the expenses of preparing the book, printing and marketing it. Anything beyond that was profit, minus the 10% or so of the author’s royalties they had to pay out.
If the book sold well and those sales were increasing, a second print run would be ordered. But if the book was not selling well, or the trend was downward, they would drop that book like a hot potato. This is where the term “out of print” comes from. That is not because there just aren’t enough books printed, but always because the publisher pulled the book.
Not so with Print on Demand (POD). POD is one of the new amazing technical solutions in the publishing world. Instead of ordering 10,000 copies and placing them on a shelf and shipping them out to book sellers, POD effectively puts your book on a digital shelf, and is available for orders any time and all the time.
Back in the day the only way a good price per book could be realized was by printing many copies of the book, but POD is not effected by quantity and thus the price per book stays virtually the same. Whether you order 1,000 copies or 1, the price is essentially the same.
Huge mini-van sized digital presses at Ingram Books POD division, called Lightning Source, receive a book order from Amazon, another bookseller or the publisher. Within minutes the text is printed and is married to a full color glossy cover and turned into a book. Instantly. There are no books on the shelf taking up space.
One of the beauties of POD is that it is relatively cheap and easy to make a change to the book. Perhaps a reader catches a mistake (it happens with just about every book ever published). If you’ve printed 10,000 books, you’ve got a problem. But with POD, you can make the change and instantly get the revised files back up on Amazon and on Kindle, Nook and iBooks.
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Selling Your Book
One of the biggest mistakes writers make is thinking that a publisher is going to spend a lot of money and time in promoting their book. New York publishers will often arrange for a book review or two, and will often line up a tour for the author to go on, usually at the author’s expense. What they WILL do is prepare the book extremely well and make it ready for the market. They will TAKE it to the market and get it on the shelves.
But then, as I stated before, it is all up to the readers. And the author!
Our proposal states in the marketing and promotion section, “The Client is primarily responsible for promoting and marketing their book.” This cannot be understated. The quality of the book is the single most important element that effects book sales. The second most important element is how the author promotes the book. If they sit back and do nothing, we can almost assuredly write off the book. Unless it is supernaturally and incredibly great and will stand on its own without any promotion.
Or unless pigs start flying.
The publisher (that would be us) prepares and crafts a beautiful book and gets it on the shelves, ready for reading. Like the bottles of sauce, we hope that we will attract buyers. But the author is like the sauce seller, standing at the end of the sauce aisle with samples, welcoming people, talking about how they made the sauce. Showing up in person.
When an author shows up in person at a signing or event, it increases the likelihood of sales. Period. Some will buy on the spot, others will remember and buy later online, to get a better deal. People love to meet the author of a book they are going to read. If they author has a blog or website and writes about the story or about other related issues and/or new work underway and events they will show up at later, there will be an increase in sales.
If a writer uses social media, especially Facebook, there will be an increase in sales. If a writer gets a core group of friends to read and post a review on Amazon and elsewhere, sales will increase. The more involved with the marketing and promotion of their own book the author is, the better will be the sales. This is proven.
So then, the BEST combination would be for an author of an extremely well written book to work like a dynamo to promote their book. If the book is just mediocre, no amount of promotion will cause it to take off and sell well. You simply can’t fool the readers. Collectively, they are extremely intelligent.
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Print vs. Digital
The rise of digital readers and Kindle, Nook, iBooks and other online book stores has led to a growing awareness that readers are getting their books in new ways. But print is not dead and never will be. We have had a few writers say, “Oh, I only want to be on iBooks….or Kindle…. Or Nook.” And we tell them they will be on that one platform, along with the others.
We believe in covering all the bases and have found across the board that our print sales perform at about the same level as digital. This again proves that many readers still love to hold a book in their hand and feel it. No matter how cool an iPad is (and mine is very cool, thank you very much) with the turning pages and other bells and whistles, it is not quite the same as holding a book in your hand and dog-earing a page. Or writing a note in the margin.
But to each their own and viva la difference! We play to both crowds and prepare your book so that it is equally accessible regardless of the whims and needs of the reader. The rule in advertising has always been to cover as many media as you can, thus we promote and sell via print and digital channels.
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Your Book Domain
Because I came from an advertising and graphic design arena and have learned a fair amount about the web and how to build websites, it became obvious to me that each book needed its own domain name and webpage. We try to buy a domain name that is closely related to your book title.
Your site or page will cover the basic information needed for readers to experience your book. This includes of course the book cover, which immediately identifies and brands the book. Then the synopsis, usually pulled from the back cover. This is critical text and we make sure it conveys the story in a promotional and exciting way.
Typically we include book excerpts consisting of chapters from the book, enough to whet the appetite of the reader. The website will also include any reviews and/or endorsement quotes about the book, as well as a photo of the author and a biography about them. Once again this helps establish a personal link with the reader. The more we can help them feel like they know the author, the more likely they will buy the book.
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Your Legacy Book
One of our three publishing models is called Legacy Books. The reason we call it a Legacy Book is that many of them are memoirs but ALL of them are for first time authors who want to leave a living legacy. Your first book is about building your brand.
With this model the writer pays us to prepare the book for publishing. Usually these are first time authors with little or no experience in the publishing world and with no following of readers. Typically these writers are also non-professional and unpublished.
What this means is that the likelihood of Koehler Books, or any publisher, giving you a Traditional publishing deal (we cover all costs) for your manuscript is slim to none. We tell you the truth about your story from the beginning. After you submit it using our online form, we will share it with our editors and contact you with specific feedback about your work.
Our review is not exhaustive but close enough for us to get a very good sense of your skill level, cleanliness of the manuscript, the style and depth of your story and what we perceive to be the commercial viability; will it sell. If your work is subpar and technically poor, we will encourage you to take some writing courses and work on your craft and return with better material.
If your work is promising or decent, and all the way up to great, we will immediately put you in the Legacy Book category, and discuss with you what our fees will be to prepare your book. If your book is supernaturally good, we will discuss a Traditional deal with you.
To begin with, your book will cost us right around $5,000. And here you thought that publishers did this for free! Rest assured that if this cost us, a minor league small Indie publisher, five grand, you can imagine that a New York publisher will spend $20,000 or more.
So let us start with $5,000 as a basis. The cleaner your manuscript, the cheaper the editing. The better your story the more likely we will be willing to share the costs. Typically when a writer comes to us with significant talent, we work out some kind of a hybrid deal that is well under $5,000. How low go depends on how good your manuscript is.
The editing alone costs us $1,500 on average. If your manuscript is a mess, you will pay more. Cover design usually comes in about $1,000. Then about $1,500 for text layout, and the remainder for the website, epub prep, printing POD prep and proofs, proofreading, etc.
Some people will call us a Vanity Press, but I can assure you that we are not. A vanity press indicates a publisher or printer who charges you to take your work as is and publishes it with little or no regard to the quality of the book. We are all about the quality of your book, partly because we know you are too. But mostly because we represent the literary and professional publishing world, and we are called to a higher standard than vanity presses and self-publishing houses.
True enough, you must pay to play. You must pay to have your work prepared in a professional and high quality manner. Please allow me to give you an incentive. While all first-time authors (with very few exceptions) must fall under our Legacy Book model, if their book does well and they bring us a second book, it is much more likely that we will accept that book in the Traditional model. We have already done this and that should be your goal.
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The Royal Treatment
Book royalties or Author’s royalties are something every writer and wannabe author looks forward to. I certain did with my first book and now do with my fifth. It is the payback, the proof and our cut of the money that the reader is paying for each book. Well, don’t buy a new car just yet!
While New York publishers pay 5-15% in royalties, we pay 30-50%. At the moment 50% is only available for Imprint deals, but we are thinking of increasing all Legacy Book royalties from 30% to 50%. After all, you are paying to have your book prepared and deserve the chance to make your money back a little faster.
First you need to understand what a royalty is. Essentially it is the net profit remaining after the book has been paid for and the printing has been paid for. It is the difference between the wholesale price and the printing price. A sample is below, showing a soft cover list price of $16.95. That does not mean that is what Amazon will list it for. Amazon will buy the book for the wholesale price of $7.62, which is the standard book wholesale trade discount of 55%.
Amazon will discount the list price down significantly to get sales. Book buyers, like all buyers, love discounting. The publisher is guaranteed the wholesale price. Meanwhile the printer/distributor takes their cut of $4.42, leaving a net profit, or net royalty, of $1.60.
Printed Books
$16.95 – list price
$7.62- wholesale price
$4.42- printing price
$3.20- net royalty
$1.60 – author’s royalty per printed book (based on 50% authors royalty)
We price eBooks on the low end of the pricing spectrum, because that seems to be the trend for new authors and titles. The exception to the rule being well known writers who are charging and getting $9.95 and up. $3.99 is a good middle price level that makes sense in the new threshold pricing structure that is sweeping the epub business. Even with the lower list price, the author’s royalty is nearly as high as in print.
eBooks
$3.99 – list price
$2.59- net royalty (may vary slightly between iBooks, Nook and Kindle)
$1.30 – author’s royalty per eBook
Author’s Royalties are for online sales and are paid out on a quarterly basis.
Authors may also buy buy their books directly from the publisher at wholesale price, and sell them directly to readers. This means then that this is by far the best way to make money with your book, as your profit will increase from $1.60 to nearly $10.
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The Experience
Becoming a published author could be compared to becoming a professional athlete. You have to want it, you have to be willing to work hard at it, and you must be willing to study the pros and follow their lead. You must be willing to learn your craft so that it becomes natural for you to act and write like a pro. Practice until you remember how to do it the right way.
I stated in the beginning that you will be treated like a pro and that is true. But you are a rookie and we expect you to show proper respect to the masters and aspire and work to become more like us. I know that sounds egocentric, but it is the truth. Bring a positive attitude, a determination to become great, a willingness to listen, a fierceness to defend and the intelligence to know when to fight and when to agree, even when it does not feel right.
The fact of the matter is that we will treat you the same way whether you pay us or we take you on as a Traditional client. The money makes no difference, but the quality makes all the difference. You must dedicate yourself to the desire for quality.
The editing will usually be the most painful part of the process. It can be exceptionally fulfilling as well, and will teach you many things about the craft of writing, as well as proofreading, grammar and other rules and tricks of the trade. Many of these things I never really wanted to learn. That’s why God invented editors and proofreaders. Much the same that my editors are not interested in knowing how to make a website.
Once the editing is done we move into the design phase. This will become different for you as the book begins to look more like a book. The cover especially is a process that will excite you and being part of that is a wonderful experience as you see your book come to life. Seeing your book website for the first time is also very cool. You can send your friends to your link. You can strut a little and preen your feathers!
Seeing your first printed book is mind blowing. It is amazing and it will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. No kidding. Giving birth, getting married, giving birth to your book. Holding your own book in your hand is romantic and visceral. Signing your name on your book and giving it to another human is so great. It will make it all worthwhile.
All of the pain and expense. All of the countless hours and missed sleep and wasted words and rejections. All of the people who told you no. The book will tell you yes, and regardless of how many books you sell, you can live off of that “yes” for a while.
We understand that publishing a book is an experience for the writer as they transform into an author. It is our desire to make that experience uplifting and encouraging. We hope to make it educational for you, and that after we are done you will know much more than when we started. We expect after all is said and done that you will be truly baptized by the experience and will be an author, deserving of the name.
Ultimately it is our desire to make a good living via publishing great books. But that desire must follow our belief and our mission, which is to serve writers. Our mission is this: to help writers achieve personal and professional success through the art and science of book publishing.
Your mission is this: write great books.
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